They Make Us Realize That We Were Not Only Made To Commune
With God, But Also What A God He Is With Whom We May Commune.
We talk
of poetry, we talk of painting, we go to the ends of the earth to see
the artists and great men of this world; but what a poet, what an
artist is God!
Truly said Michael Angelo, "The true painting is only a
copy of the divine perfections - a shadow of his pencil."
I was sitting on a mossy trunk of an old pine, looking up admiringly
on the wonderful heights around me - crystal peaks sparkling over dark
pine trees - shadowy, airy distances of mountain heights, rising
crystalline amid many-colored masses of cloud; while, looking out over
my head from green hollows, I saw the small cottages, so tiny, in
their airy distance, that they seemed scarcely bigger than a
squirrel's nut, which he might have dropped in his passage. A pretty
Savoyard girl, I should think about fifteen years old, came up to me.
"Madame admires the mountains," she said.
I assented.
"Yes," she added, "strangers always admire our mountains."
"And don't you admire them?" said I, looking, I suppose, rather amused
into her bright eyes.
"No," she said, laughing. "Strangers come from hundreds of miles to
see them all the time; but we peasants don't care for them, no more
than the dust of the road."
I could but half believe the bright little puss when she said so; but
there was a lumpish, soggy fellow accompanying her, whose nature
appeared to be sufficiently unleavened to make almost any thing
credible in the line of stupidity. In fact, it is one of the greatest
drawbacks to the pleasure with which one travels through this
beautiful country, to see what kind of human beings inhabit it. Here
in the Alps, heaven above and earth beneath, tree, rock, water, light
and shadow, every form, and agent, and power of nature, seem to be
exerting themselves to produce a constant and changing poem and
romance; every thing is grand, noble, free, and yet beautiful: in all
these regions there is nothing so repulsive as a human dwelling.
A little further on we stopped at a village to refresh the horses. The
_auberge_ where we stopped was built like a great barn, with an
earth floor, desolate and comfortless. The people looked poor and
ground down, as if they had not a thought above the coarsest animal
wants. The dirty children, with their hair tangled beyond all hope of
combing, had the begging whine, and the trick of raising their hands
for money, when one looked at them, which is universal in the Catholic
parts of Switzerland. Indeed, all the way from the Sardinian frontier
we had been dogged by beggars continually. Parents seemed to look upon
their children as valuable only for this purpose; the very baby in
arms is taught to make a pitiful little whine, and put out its fat
hand, if your eye rests on it.
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